In most cities, elite training facilities remain inward-looking spaces, designed for performance but largely detached from the urban life around them. The planned performance centre for Toronto Tempo suggests a different approach. Located at Exhibition Place in downtown Toronto, the project brings together elite athlete infrastructure, public access, and landscape transformation within a single programme.
Announced in partnership with the City of Toronto, the facility will serve as the training home for Canada’s first Women’s National Basketball Association team while operating as a year-round community hub. Scheduled to open in 2028, it reflects a shift in how sports infrastructure is conceived, particularly for women’s professional sport, where purpose-built environments have historically been limited.
A site reworked from parking to public sports landscape
The project is set to occupy a site at 701 Fleet Street, located just outside the Princes’ Gates at Exhibition Place. The land, currently used as a surface parking lot, will be reconfigured into a combined indoor and outdoor sports environment with a stronger public presence.
Alongside the indoor performance facility, plans include outdoor basketball courts, a mini-pitch and new park space. This move extends the project beyond the footprint of a single building, positioning it as part of a broader reworking of the public realm within Exhibition Place. The intervention introduces a more active edge to a site that has historically prioritised vehicular use over pedestrian or recreational engagement.
The location also places the facility within walking distance of Coca-Cola Coliseum, the team’s home arena, consolidating training, competition and community functions within a defined urban cluster.
Designing for a different athlete
Designed by HOK, with landscape input from NAK Design Strategies, the performance centre is structured around a set of principles that place athlete experience and accessibility at the centre of the programme. While high-performance facilities are not new, the specific emphasis here lies in how those environments are tailored.
The building will include two WNBA regulation courts, supported by sports medicine, rehabilitation and conditioning spaces, hydrotherapy pools and recovery areas. These elements align with established standards for elite training environments. What differentiates the scheme is how ancillary spaces are configured.
Locker rooms, for instance, are planned with individual showers and changing areas, alongside salon and vanity spaces, and a dedicated mother’s room. These inclusions respond to practical and cultural aspects of athlete experience that have often been treated as secondary in legacy facilities. The result is a spatial arrangement that prioritises both privacy and team cohesion, rather than defaulting to inherited layouts.
The programme also integrates player lounges, dining areas and spaces for film study and team development, alongside offices that bring basketball operations and business functions together. This reflects a broader consolidation of performance, wellbeing and organisational infrastructure within a single environment.
From team facility to civic infrastructure
The most notable departure from conventional training centres lies in how the facility is intended to operate beyond the professional team. Through its partnership with the City of Toronto, the project embeds public access into its structure rather than treating it as an afterthought.
At least 2,200 hours of community use per year are expected to be secured through the lease arrangement, covering access to courts and facilities for grassroots programmes and local users. This level of access positions the building closer to civic infrastructure than to a private sports complex.
The inclusion of outdoor courts and parkland further reinforces this shift, allowing the site to function as an everyday recreational destination. The design, therefore, moves between two modes of use, supporting elite training during the season while opening up to the public in a more continuous way.
The delivery model reflects this dual role. The facility will be constructed on city-owned land, with the team responsible for development and maintenance under a long-term lease. This arrangement aligns public land use with private investment, while retaining a degree of civic oversight through access commitments.
Together, these elements suggest an emerging approach to sports infrastructure, where performance, inclusion and urban integration are treated as interdependent rather than competing priorities. In this context, the Toronto Tempo performance centre does not rely on scale or spectacle. Its significance lies in how it reframes the relationship between elite sport and the city, and in how design begins to respond to an athlete who was not previously the default.
